The two teams split at the next intersection, Delta team heading west and Gamma heading north.

Zoe quickly glanced through the reports from the other teams, noting Beta and Epsilon had both seen the Jumino and were unable to help. The undertaking of getting a huge, damaged ship repaired and back in the water was more than she could draw an answer to, for now. Letting the reports file themselves, she turned her attention to the suit, which she was now calling 'FK', running the translator program through its systems.

Letting the system work itself, she focused on the task at hand, recruiting more people for the Community. She had a couple of days to travel a distance she could cover in only a few hours if she had to.

Tyson signalled to slow down as they came across a 'town' even smaller than Woodville, barely three houses. Signs of human habitation were evident, washing on lines, a lazy line of smoke from a cooking fire, the smell of baked goods.

"Anyone home?" Zoe called out, amplifying her voice with cupped hands.

A dog started barking from behind the furthest house as it ran out into the street. A loud man's voice rang out, swearing at the animal before the man appeared, bow in hand, an arrow already notched. "Who are you, whaddya want?

Not interested, we should move on.

"Just travelling through sir," Zoe said clearly as more faces and weapons appeared from the houses nearby. "Wanted to see if you wanted to trade."

The man sized them up. He was clearly the one in charge as the others who had appeared were looking to him for guidance. Fixing his gaze on Maddison with her one visible rifle, it didn't take Zoe being told by Tyson he was thinking of trouble. The buggy's turret, Tyson's rifle and a stun pistol sprang into view as the town also drew their weapons.

"I would strongly advise against such rash actions, sir," Zoe stated as her remaining drones started to rise out of the buggy. "We are far from easy targets and were willing to trade, however, we will move on and leave your town and kin be." Silently ordering Avi forward, they drove forward towards the man and his dog, who were both forced to move aside before the buggy accelerated on down the road.

~

The rest of the day was a waste of effort to Zoe, as each little community or group they encountered had little to no interest in anything other than trading.

They did find a small town supermarket that had been abandoned years before and looted many times, but the trio had a look through the building anyway. Behind the front counter was a locked cupboard which had a few dents from failed open attempts. Prying it open with a crowbar, Zoe found a handful of phones and the store's computers, happily adding them to her diminished supplies. Meanwhile, out in the back of the store, Tyson called out that he'd found a safe.

Trotting out back, Zoe watched as Maddison turned the dial experimentally, trying to see if she could open it. Shaking her head at it, she stepped back from the small box safe, giving it a glare. "Can't see far enough ahead to open it."

"I have an idea," Zoe said, taking one of the pilfered phones, fine tuning its microphone, shoving a program to analyze the noises into it and placing it against the safe. "Ok, try now."

Maddison grinned wolfishly, using the phones screen as an indicator of how she was doing. After a few moments, she started chewing on her lower lip while watching the screen. Tyson and Zoe stood as silently as they could, watching Maddison work slowly on the safe.

Minutes passed and Zoe winced as she had to move, her arm holding the phone to the safe starting to ache from staying still. Maddison shot her a quick glare, which softened as she stood and stretched. "Shake yourself out, give me the phone and go rummage. This safe is going to give me its secrets."

Taking the suggestion, Zoe went back to her haul, checking over the computers first. The phones were all basically the same, just different models. The computers though, she had no idea what secrets they would hold. Taking the first of the machines out to Avi, she placed it within easy reach of the console and Avi’s mainframe, hooking up a few cables into the box.

Upon booting the computer, Avi immediately shut down the connection. ~ Virus detected. Engaging countermeasures. ~

Zoe stared at Avi, wondering how the system managed to catch that before she did. Maybe because she was focused on the computer, she didn’t notice the virus trying to make its way to Avi. Sitting in the buggy with the computer next to her, she took off the side of the case and placed her hand on the exposed harddrive.

It took Zoe less than a second to recognise the virus that Avi had picked up on, a relatively aggressive one that had once been something major companies would have had trouble countering.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

But Zoe, with support from Avi, dismantled the virus, protecting her property while cleaning the computer so she didn’t have to worry about it. Doing a deep scan of the harddrive revealed a few anomalies, but nothing that she couldn’t bypass or fix. Letting Avi open the connection again, she felt Avi’s programming do what she expected. It isolated the harddrive, scanned it, plucked all useful data, sent it to her cloud storage and began to clean the harddrive. Zoe was fascinated with the decision making process that happened in Avi’s systems. Stuff that she might have discarded was kept, which she may eventually go through, but likely not. Years of purchase orders and retail receipts from before the war were something she didn’t necessarily think was useful. Not that she didn’t have nearly infinite storage as every computer and harddrive she added to the network expanded what she could store.

Avi alerted Zoe to Tyson’s presence as he brought out a few dusty robot toys of the store. Zoe’s eyes lit up as she gently took the toys from Tyson, mind whirling with possibilities.

“I found a few more, some damaged drones too.”

Forgetting about the computers, Zoe eagerly followed Tyson back into the store and past Maddison, who was glaring at the safe, to a store room in the back of the store. “It seems this store had all sorts of random things, not just groceries,” Tyson said, waving to a pile of mostly damaged drones and robots. “I can’t make any sense of what went through the shop keeper’s mind, but I suppose everything is useful to you.”

“Most things, yes,” Zoe replied as she started lifting things from the pile. “Can you please bring me a table and any boxes you can find?”

As Tyson went about fetching things for Zoe, she started sorting the pile into useful, maybe useful and junk, stopping only when Avi requested another computer to analyse and when Maddison whooped with delight as the safe finally opened.

“This is going to be disappointing,” Tyson predicted to Zoe as they entered the manager's office. “I bet it’s just records of transactions and money.”

“I’m hoping for guns and ammo,” Maddison said.

“I don’t think it’s big enough for guns or lots of files. I think it might be some personal belongings, like jewelry.” Zoe kind of hoped that she was wrong though. It would feel, well, wrong, to be raiding a safe with someone’s private possessions in it.

Breathing out, Maddison pulled on the door of the safe.

Disappointment settled over the group as several wads of cash and documents of ownership were pulled out. The brightly coloured notes were still crisp and bright compared to the dusty room around them, but seeing as how currency hadn't been used for many years, was about as useful as the dust.

"Well, we can keep a few for the museum," Zoe suggested, putting a few of the different coloured notes into a pocket.

"What's a museum?" Tyson asked before holding up a hand. "Got it, old junk on display."

Zoe laughed, heading back to her own junk. "Basically."

~

The rest of the afternoon passed uneventfully as Zoe rummaged through the tech while the twins explored the tiny deserted town. Maddison did find another safe, which she was happy was another dial combination lock, which Zoe’s program helped with. A pair of hunting rifles and a few boxes of bullets made their way into the buggy after thorough inspection. Tyson made mention that there were a few pieces of jewelry in there too, which he had stuffed into a pocket for later trading. It always amazed him how people went a bit silly over some shiny metal.

Securing the tech she had raided from the abandoned store to the trailer, Zoe dusted her hands off, pleased with her haul. Tyson and Maddison, however, stared at the piles of, to them, useless junk. Tyson compared Zoe's reaction to tech to others reactions to jewelry, but he knew how useful the tech could be, so let it be.

~

The decision to just drive to the airport came to Zoe during the night. She had the reports from Atlas about their sweeps of the area, so she supposed that there was no point in not just heading straight into the city to see what everyone else had achieved and who they had brought with them.

As first light broke, she signalled ahead their eta and just drove at full speed, letting Avi go as fast as it deemed safe.

Brisbane rolled into view and the trio took the sights in. The outer areas they entered had some signs of life, vacant lots turned into gardens, animals running wild with children, who paused to wave at the travellers. They followed the travel instructions sent to them as the vehicle connected to the local comms, slowing down when near people. Not too long after the city, they came across the large airport, bigger than the one the Community had access to. She immediately spotted Atlas and pointed it out to the twins, who took in the size of the plane compared to the small ones they'd seen at Warnervale.

~ Incoming transmission. ~

Zoe mentally accepted the connection, watching how it connected through Avi to her visor.

"Zoe, come to Atlas, there's an important discussion we need your input for."

She frowned. "Won't be long."

Driving through the open gates, she drove directly to the plane, over the gaps between strips and to the terminal that they were using as a base.

Making their way to the conference room they were using, Zoe heard raised and heated voices. Picking up the pace, she entered the room with the twins on her heels.

Seated around a large table were the team leaders from Atlas, Beta and Epsilon teams, along with other important people who had come with the team for support.

"Zoe, come in," Jolli said to her, flicking her gaze over the twins. As she spoke, the room quieted for a moment as everyone took the dangerous aura of the twins in. When the twins grinned broadly in unison, everyone relaxed a little.

"What's happening?" Zoe asked Jolli.

"The Jumino is a slave ship."

Zoe was stunned into silence, but snapped out of it as she felt the twins tense behind her. Glancing at them, they'd moved their hands to their sword hilts. She reached out, placing a gentle hand on Tyson's shoulder trying to reassure them before turning back.

"Ok, what's the plan?"